Watch Out For Those Plastic Bags!
Here’s a little car advice that may be hard to take serious, but trust me, this is no urban myth. One of our customers brought in his Audi A4 1.8t because he was hearing metallic grinding noise coming from under his car. It didn’t take too long to figure out that the transmission was bad, but as for the reason why, well, that’s where it gets interesting… About a week earlier, he ran over a plastic grocery bag. By now, everyone in the world knows exactly what kind of grocery bag I’m talking about because they’re everywhere they shouldn’t be. They’re floating down the Platte river, flying through the air, and I think they grow on trees because there’s ten of them on the tree in my front yard.
Our customer didn’t think twice about hitting the plastic bag, and who could blame him? They’re a nuisance and an eyesore, so if you can take one out, the better off this planet would be. That would not be the end for this plastic bag in particular, and it seems it exacted it’s revenge on the car that ran it down. When we lifted the car, we could see that the bag had wrapped around the inner cv axle, pushing in the drive axle seal so that all the fluid poured out of the transmission. Lack of lubrication caused the transmission to sieze up and ruined the transmission completely. We were able to find a good used transmission for the customer and we had the car up and running in record time. This was the first time we had ever seen this happen, and hopefully the last. Just watch out for those plastic bags!
The Westfalia Project
One Of The Finer Things In Life… blog #1 – The Westfalia Project
The street I live on is lined with tiny houses that are owned by working class folks like my husband and myself. Every night for the last four years I have made a point to drive past my neighbor Gilberto’s house for this one reason- parked out front is an old sun faded orangish-brown Volkswagen Westfalia. Some of the windows have been smashed in, no doubt by hooligans who have no repect for the finer things in life, and there are some rust accents that need to be addressed, but this has never deterred me from admiring it.
As the years passed, Brian and I had become friends with Gilberto and knew that he wanted to sell the old Westy, but it seemed too daunting to refurbish something that needed so much attention. The pop-top tent canvas is in tatters and would need to be replaced completely, along with the motor, which is pretty much toast! Since the windows were broken, the weather had caused some signifigant interior damage, and there’s more furniture in a Westy than there is in my house. When we calculated the costs for the rebuild the first time, it was enough to keep us at bay… for a while at least.
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